hiya! can someone give me feedback on this book?

Hexenblume

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Hiya! So I have this book!


And I was wondering if a couple people would mind sharing their feedback with me! It doesn't matter if it's positive, negative, harsh, or sugarcoated. I just want to know if I am not completely blowing it. It would mean the world to me if someone could give me their thoughts about my book, even if its just the prologue. Thank you!

Aaah, thank you so much to everyone who reads this, and have an absolutely fantastic day!
 
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ModernGold7ne

That fly you can't swat.
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Hiya! So I have this book!


And I was wondering if a couple people would mind sharing their feedback with me! It doesn't matter if it's positive, negative, harsh, or sugarcoated. I just want to know if I am not completely blowing it. It would mean the world to me if someone could give me their thoughts about my book, even if its just the prologue. Thank you!

Aaah, thank you so much to everyone who reads this, and have an absolutely fantastic day!
Since it's only 5 chapters, I'll do it for a comment in the story below.

I am aware some people use phones and are thus unable to see signatures.
I've read your story, will give my feedback after i get a comment..
You should fix the large spacings, really annoying.
 
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Hexenblume

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Since it's only 5 chapters, I'll do it for a comment in the story below.

I am aware some people use phones and are thus unable to see signatures.
I've read your story, will give my feedback after i get a comment..
You should fix the large spacings, really annoying.

Got it! I'll read your story and give you a comment then!

Aah, but yes, the spaces are kind of there because of my style of formatting. I don't think I can change how Justified works ehe.
 

ModernGold7ne

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Well there's not much one can do when they're dead and is talking to an info-dependent entity.
In the regard of show and tell, chapter 2 and 3 are superior in that subject.

Screenshot_20220402-021348.png
 

Hexenblume

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Well there's not much one can do when they're dead and is talking to an info-dependent entity.
In the regard of show and tell, chapter 2 and 3 are superior in that subject.

View attachment 13338

Great! It was just a thing I noticed lol, I thought the whole introduction was a bit boring and could have been done better, but its great as it is! Keep up the amazing work!
 

ModernGold7ne

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As for Harmless sweetie, it feels episodic, easy to visualise but with a messed up flow, you should work on your chapter transitions.

Also presentation is important, not how the story reads but how it is structured.

Nothing wrong with giving information as long as that information is given within the constraints of the story.

If you ever have to give information away, make it reasonable, easily consumable and always entertaining.

Due to lacking context, I was initially confused by alot of what was going on in your story.

You made me ask questions then skipped the answers.

You introduced characters without actually introducing them. (talking about the cat ear thingie)

All characters including the protagonist currently feel flat.

I know this is supposed to be a comedy but it's not funny if the audience don't see the joke.

My visualization was a 90s cartoon, i didn't understand the motives or way of thinking of the protagonist.

Was i entertained, yes, but only for the first three chapters, after that it got old, the disconnect between chapters acted as a real deterrent between me and the plot.

As for errors, well I already gave you feedback when I commented in your story.

If you want to evolve as a writer, the best way to do that would be by reading the works of established others, most of the problems I stated was because of the vast feeling of disconnect between chapters.

Ignoring the flaws, yeah, i can say i didn't force to read it.
Great! It was just a thing I noticed lol, I thought the whole introduction was a bit boring and could have been done better, but its great as it is! Keep up the amazing work!
Believe it or not, but I hated and didn't enjoy any of the other chapter ones I wrote.
Starting the story is always harder than continuing it, building a foundation always takes time.
 

Hexenblume

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As for Harmless sweetie, it feels episodic, easy to visualise but with a messed up flow, you should work on your chapter transitions.

Also presentation is important, not how the story reads but how it is structured.

Nothing wrong with giving information as long as that information is given within the constraints of the story.

If you ever have to give information away, make it reasonable, easily consumable and always entertaining.

Due to lacking context, I was initially confused by alot of what was going on in your story.

You made me ask questions then skipped the answers.

You introduced characters without actually introducing them. (talking about the cat ear thingie)

All characters including the protagonist currently feel flat.

I know this is supposed to be a comedy but it's not funny if the audience don't see the joke.

My visualization was a 90s cartoon, i didn't understand the motives or way of thinking of the protagonist.

Was i entertained, yes, but only for the first three chapters, after that it got old, the disconnect between chapters acted as a real deterrent between me and the plot.

As for errors, well I already gave you feedback when I commented in your story.

If you want to evolve as a writer, the best way to do that would be by reading the works of established others, most of the problems I stated was because of the vast feeling of disconnect between chapters.

Ignoring the flaws, yeah, i can say i didn't force to read it.

Believe it or not, but I hated and didn't enjoy any of the other chapter ones I wrote.
Starting the story is always harder than continuing it, building a foundation always takes time.


Aaah thank you! I'll keep what you said in mind!

Though, I do have to say that Clailip's (and most others) character isn't supposed to make sense (well not yet anyway) so I guess I hit the nail on that one! I like absurd characters that look and feel flat for a couple of chapters and flesh them out as I go (Which might actually be a bad idea-) That said, all of your criticisms are valid and I'll try to improve! And yeah, I totally expected the comedy to fall a bit flat, my humour is a bit weird and out of the ordinary so I don't really expect anyone to bust out laughing at my work lol, I'll try to do better on that department too!

Cheers, and have a nice life, and good luck on your book! It has so much potential!
 

TheEldritchGod

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Okay. Not a lot of time here, ButI'm gonna give my first impressions.

Your use of spacing is terrible.

I feel like I'm being assaulted, Like I'm getting hit with a machine gun and you are rapid firing your sentences at me. I know you feel like the spacing breaks things up, but it actually just makes it all seem uniform. My eyes have a hard time following the writing because you are... how do I put it? Droning. You are droning.

You are like a professor who is teaching a class and speaking in a flat emotionless tone, from a visual perspective. I can't figure out from looking at your story where my eyes are supposed to go. I read through your prologue and it has some variation, but I don't really have a "feel" of the flow of things.

If you are going with single spacing, then you need paragraph indents. You really need it. That way where you have parts of the story that are not intended to be paragraphs, like:

[Congratulations, you have been bestowed upon three Unique Skills.]

[Harmless Sweetie gained.]

[Magical Companions gained.]

[Toymaker gained.]

[Set to reincarnate to the SSS-Class danger world—Magamundo.]

It doesn't blend in. This section shouldn't have indents, whereas every other paragraph should, but because you have NO indents, mentally every paragraph is on the same level as these lines. They shouldn't.

Consider double spacing to break up important sections. Like before the above quote and after should be double spacing to set it apart.

Also, you have some lines all by themselves that clearly should be in a paragraph. Don't be afraid of a wall of text, as long as you frame it properly. if everything of a given subject needs to be together, put it together.

I am a reader. Reading is a mental exercise. You need to GUIDE my eyes. You need to let my eyes rest. You need to help me focus and let me know when I can pause and reflect. I have no idea where in your prologue I can stop to think about what I just read at any point of the story. I HAVE TO read that section from beginning to end without pause. You have made reading the prologue a sprint. It is a prologue. It should be a comfortable stroll. I should enjoy my stroll, pausing to smell the flowers and enjoy the scenery. I should not feel like "DAMN, I HAVE TO GET THIS OVER WITH."

So, before I do anything else, right off the bat I suggest you work on your pacing, and visual use of empty space.

I'll make a note to come back and make comments on the actual content later when I have time.

---

"Ah…"

A kneeling woman inside of a circle of harrowing ground sighed. Her dark-blue hair flowed beautifully in the wind, twinkling as the moonlight reflected off of it. She smiled, though this smile was not a happy one, it was one of pure despair.

Okay. Lets move onto your opening. Normally you would have a single line as your opener, but you have "Ah..."
THAT. IS. TERRIBLE.

Your first line, is the ONLY LINE MOST PEOPLE WILL READ. If I was thinking about reading this book and I got past your cover page, and I opened up to "Ah..." I would close the page, move on, and never look back. However, this isn't the opener. Your opener is three lines. That is 2 lines too many.. YOU LIVE AND DIE ON YOUR OPENER.

Your opener is really:

A kneeling woman inside of a circle of harrowing ground sighed.

Okay. We have a woman. She is surrounded by danger. She isn't worried about the danger. She is merely sighing. Her sigh is an "Ah..." as in a sigh of revelation. She has realized something while she is in this area of danger. She is encircled by death.

or is she?

Her dark-blue hair flowed beautifully in the wind, twinkling as the moonlight reflected off of it.

Huh? WHAT THE FUCK? I have a woman IN PERIL and you are telling me about how her hair flows beautifully in the wind? Moonlight reflecting off it? WHAT? SHE IS SURROUNDED BY HARROWING GROUND. SHE IS SIGHING WITH REVELATION. WHY DO I CARE ABOUT HER HAIR?

How does her hair reflect the situation? What is her hair telling me? If THIS was the opening line, I'd be thinking, The protagonist is someone beautiful in a situation where it is night and there is something romantic going on.

She smiled, though this smile was not a happy one, it was one of pure despair.

Okay... we have the classic bitter smile of irony. However, is this really PURE despair? Really? She just had a sigh of revelation. She should be having a moment of reflection as she contemplates how she got into this terrible situation. If she is truly experiencing PURE despair, then she has NOTHING BUT DESPAIR. There is no time for self-reflection for she has lost all hope. There is nothing left. It is the BOTTOM and there is nothing else. How can she have a moment of revelation AND be PURE despair? You cannot have both.

This is a hodge-podge of nice sounding words that are put together to make me think this is deep, but if I spend any time thinking about it, I have way more questions ABOUT the meta then the story itself. Here, look at this.

Toshi stopped walking as he tried to figure out where the planet went.

This is the opener to Flip The Script. What does it tell you?

Toshi is our MC. He was walking and in the middle of his walk, something happened to make him stop. No action took place against him. He didn't fall. He didn't pass out. One step, walking, then not walking. Why?

He was trying to figure out where the planet went.

Not, where Am I? But something has happened that has caused him to wonder, "WHERE IS THE PLANET I WAS WALKING ON?" He was somewhere that in his current location he not only wasn't on the ground anymore, but he was somewhere he couldn't tell there was a PLANET anymore.

Tell me, are you curious as to what happened to the planet? Are you wondering who Toshi is and why he is in this situation? Do you have any concern for the MC? Do you want to know what happens to him? Can you relate to being in a situation where your entire universe is turned upside down with no warning?

Are you thinking of reading the next paragraph to find out more? At least ONE more paragraph, maybe?

He looked around and found himself in a giant, formless, white space. No horizon. No ground. No sky. It was like he was floating in a blank web page. Thinking hard, he tried to remember the last thing that happened, ~I was walking across the street. It was late. I was trying to make my way home from work. Then...~ He glanced around and muttered to himself, "Something happened?"

This is the equivalent to the three lines you have after "Ah..." We have his new situation. He is floating in endless white space. He's not about to die, he's just lost all frame of reference. We get his mindset, "~I was walking...~ And we learn about our MC. He is THINKING and we see his thoughts and how he reacts. He isn't panicking. He isn't freaking out. He is reviewing the situation and trying to solve the problem. We get a glimpse of his personality. How does he deal with the absolutely insane and impossible? He thinks. Then, as his thinking fails him, he speaks out loud. This shows he isn't unflappable. He is starting to freak out. Slowly. He begins with talking to himself. His grasp on reality is shaky so he needs to hear something, even if it is his own voice. He is slowly creeping towards a panic attack, but it is a slow process.

What do we know about your MC?

We have contradictory information and we don't even know her name. We have a beautiful girl who is surrounded by danger who has given up and lost all hope. She's a LOSER. She's LOST. She has been defeated. She is pathetic. The only think I find appealing about her is the fact that her hair looks nice in the moonlight.

Is this the case? I dunno. I have only your opener to go off of. Am I making a lot of assumptions?

YUP.

Guess what? Your readers will make a lot of assumptions as well. I don't know what you INTENDED, but what I am THINKING is what matters. It doesn't matter what you write. What matters is what your audience READS. You want to get more readers?

FIX YOUR OPENER.

On the other hand, don't lie. Don't make an opener that misleads me. Your opener should reflect the story. If your story is about a beautiful woman who has hair that looks nice in the moonlight who has lost and given up, then the opener should reflect that. Don't LIE to your reader, but if the story is different, then you need to fix this.
 
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TheEldritchGod

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---

Okay...

I really want to do this line by line, But I'm going to just hit the highlights as I go along.

Between paragraphs 9 and 10, you need to do something. Like, give me some sort of indication that there is a change in perspective because reading your story gave me whiplash.

You need some sort of establishing shot after your opening, and between paragraph 10 and 11. What I mean is a narration shot. Give me a top down view of things.

Am I supposed to like Lilianna? Is she our MC? Because she's evil. She fuckin' destroyed a COUNTRY for the sake of magic. She has killed untold innocents for petty revenge and she didn't even die. Holy CRAP. Right now I'm rooting for the people who killed her. I don't think you want that.

Okay...

Show don't tell, unless it is boring, then tell and get it over with.

You are mixing up your showing and telling. You really need to have TELL to establish the scene, then SHOW until you get to another boring part. You are ShowTellShowTellShowTell. it's jarring.

Example:

"Ano na!? Galaw galaw naman!² I'm just gonna walk my way there. It'll be faster and I'll have an extra ten pesos for tusok-tusok.³" She huffed, her heels clacked angrily at the cracked pavement, walking in the general direction of her call-center job. She was amazing at customer service and had a ton of experience handling kids, so she had lots of patience to spare for adults that wanted to act like children.

You are showing what she is doing, then TELLING US "was amazing at customer service and had a ton of experience handling kids, so she had lots of patience to spare for adults that wanted to act like children." How do we know this? Why do we know this?

Why is she talking out loud? Does she talk to herself often? Shouldn't she be thinking this? It's okay to share the MC's thoughts, but they should be thoughts, not words. If she's speaking out loud, then this is a character trait and needs to be included in the character AND BE A FLAW. If you do not include it as a flaw, then it is a plot contrivance for the ease of the author to give exposition.

Ugh. Running out of time. I'll try and get back to this another day.
 

TheEldritchGod

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---

Okay...

I really want to do this line by line, But I'm going to just hit the highlights as I go along.

Between paragraphs 9 and 10, you need to do something. Like, give me some sort of indication that there is a change in perspective because reading your story gave me whiplash.

You need some sort of establishing shot after your opening, and between paragraph 10 and 11. What I mean is a narration shot. Give me a top down view of things.

Am I supposed to like Lilianna? Is she our MC? Because she's evil. She fuckin' destroyed a COUNTRY for the sake of magic. She has killed untold innocents for petty revenge and she didn't even die. Holy CRAP. Right now I'm rooting for the people who killed her. I don't think you want that.

Okay...

Show don't tell, unless it is boring, then tell and get it over with.

You are mixing up your showing and telling. You really need to have TELL to establish the scene, then SHOW until you get to another boring part. You are ShowTellShowTellShowTell. it's jarring.

Example:

"Ano na!? Galaw galaw naman!² I'm just gonna walk my way there. It'll be faster and I'll have an extra ten pesos for tusok-tusok.³" She huffed, her heels clacked angrily at the cracked pavement, walking in the general direction of her call-center job. She was amazing at customer service and had a ton of experience handling kids, so she had lots of patience to spare for adults that wanted to act like children.

You are showing what she is doing, then TELLING US "was amazing at customer service and had a ton of experience handling kids, so she had lots of patience to spare for adults that wanted to act like children." How do we know this? Why do we know this?

Why is she talking out loud? Does she talk to herself often? Shouldn't she be thinking this? It's okay to share the MC's thoughts, but they should be thoughts, not words. If she's speaking out loud, then this is a character trait and needs to be included in the character AND BE A FLAW. If you do not include it as a flaw, then it is a plot contrivance for the ease of the author to give exposition.

Ugh. Running out of time. I'll try and get back to this another day.

---

How about...

Everyone is born with a destiny and a fate.


Your destiny is the best you can hope to achieve, your fate is the worst. Hitler might have had a destiny to become a great painter, but his fate... well...

There are a few people, very few, that have great destinies and great fates. These people usually achieve great change and usually horrible ends. Usually it is those few who decide that they are not going to accept either and attempt to forge their own path.

Fate and Destiny are bitter lovers when scorned.

A woman knelt within a circle of cursed ground. Her own hubris and will brought her there to submit in that place. Not entirely tricked, not entirely by her own will, she still arrived here because the alternative was worse.

So. Much. Worse.

Her dark-blue hair flowed beautifully in the wind, twinkling as the moonlight reflected off of it. She smiled, though this smile was not a happy one, it was bitter and with more than a tinge of spite, "I couldn't stitch up a good ending for everyone it seems." She mumbled to no one in particular, "Let me guess, you'll be turning me into some sort of wicked villain if you manage to kill me, right?" Her voice was smooth and sweet, but had a venomous and sharp edge to it. Her eyes turned into slits as she glared at the people in front of her, her eerie smile never leaving her face.

"This isn't anything personal, Miss Lilianna. I hope you understand." A man clad in black armor said, staring down at the witch but not daring to take a single step inside the blackened ground that surrounded her. Just a single touch was enough to kill after all, and he was merely a general that climbed the ranks not with skill, but money.

She pitied them. She hated them and felt nothing but pity because they had no idea what they had done. The promises she had made, the bargain she had struck. There would be a price for this. She thought if she made herself indispensable, if she was the lynch pin that kept everything in motion, no one would be foolish enough to betray her.

Never underestimate a fool, for fools are so ingenious.

There was a way to undo the damage. It would take time. Time and time and time again. So much time she couldn't accomplish it even if she was going to survive. They hoped to imprison her. Bleed her. Harvest her. She had made many sacrifices, but she would not be their martyr.

She wove her last spell that she would cast with this body. Ripping out a piece of her soul, she imbued it with the spell and gave it a heartfelt goodbye before being put into a deep slumber. It blinked and looked back at her, like a child unto its mother. She did what she had to do to set it free. She grabbed it tight in her fist.

She thrust it out of the circle to let it go.

In the middle of the cursed ground, Lilianna sat burning. Though her flesh was peeling off as if it were tape, and her eyes were bursting at the seams, she was calm. The general, was not. He shouted words, accusations, the word 'impossible' was uttered more than once.

They never understood how much she had sacrificed. How much the land and her were tied together. If she remained in the circle, it would be a long, slow, painful death from which none would ever recover. If she died quickly, it would be painful, but perhaps she could sever the connection fast enough. Transfer it to an echo before...

She wasn't fast enough.

That night, the stars shone bright as ever. The pale moon's light would have enveloped the land. It would have been quite the beautiful night... if anyone could have seen the sky.

It was all blocked out by the smoke and soot that the burning Isles' produced. The rivers turned stagnant. Entire forests dried out. A single errant spark and a firestorm was unleashed. Mountains shuddered and long forgotten things that never knew the touch of sunlight stirred.

The land died.

Almost.


Witches of her caliber never died, they only slept until their power returned. In a way, she was only dreaming.

The swirling fog enveloped the mote. It lifted higher and higher, seeing the land. It struggled to recover. It was in pain and the mote could do nothing. It watched as it drifted away. Across the cosmos, a beam of energy appeared. Somewhere far away, from a dark place where no light should exist. With a shout, a world made itself known to a wider audience. A strange, alien world unlike any other in the universe. A place without magic built on strange and arcane sciences. As she drifted towards the light, she heard words that came from no where. Words more like an echo in her head than anything else.

"Go forth and grow strong. I task you to fix what I could not. Be my proxy. This is my will, and it will be your responsibility to carry it out. When I awaken from my slumber, we shall be reunited once more."


---

Gabrielle Agustin woke up to the sound of a car horn.

She had been stuck in traffic for at least ten minutes. She rested her head against the steering wheel for only a moment and passed out, apparently. She blinked and looked around, trying to shake off the feeling of disorientation she always felt when she had one of her crazy nightmares.


She looked over her shoulder at the man behind her, "ALRIGHT ALREADY! Jeeze!" She put the car into gear and pulled forward twenty feet, "HAPPY?" The short and tan college-girl groaned as she slammed it back into park. Her dark combed hair rested neatly on her shoulders as she waited for a jeep to finally get going so she could hopefully get to her night shift without getting a pay cut for being late.

Again.

Now then. What do we have with this rewrite?

1. Opener - We are now saying this story will be about your destiny and fate. The best you can be, or the worst. So there is a possibility for failure and we won't know how it turns out until the end. It is possible to achieve great things, but still have a horrible end. The reader now knows what the story is about, and what are the stakes. What is possible, and what is at risk. What are we to learn with this story? Will it be destiny or fate, or both? Is it possible to change or ignore them both? We do not know, but you must read to find out.

2. We have our example, who is clearly the one who created the MC soul. We have her horrible fate. How did she get to this point? Why? What happened that she willingly went down this path? These are things you must answer later, but they are certainly things the reader would like to know.

3. We keep the destruction of everything, but we remove the Proto-MC from being to blame. Her choices were a huge risk or a certain, slow, inevitable death of all things. She gambled. She lost. BUT... she took precautions. She hedged her bets with the Mote's release.

4. We frame it as a dream that the MC has been having. It is the call to adventure. This is something that the MC must have. The pull from her mundane life into the other world. We already know the MC is important, but we also know the MC is just a mote. Does the MC have individuality? Is she her own person, or nothing more than a fragment of a greater whole? What is individuality? How will she 'exist' if they merge? Will she be okay with it? Will her former personality force herself to submit?

5. Finally, we have a set up for her to have conflict with her boss. A chance to have life get so shitty that the obvious choice is to sy, "Fuck it, lets go running off to another universe to get magical powers as the once and future witch-queen.

Or... whatever the hell your story is about. I haven't read that far. Just getting to paragraph 10 has been quite a bit of work.

I'll wait until I get more feedback from you before continuing. I'm not sure if you are looking for this level of feedback.
 

Hexenblume

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Okay. Not a lot of time here, ButI'm gonna give my first impressions.

Your use of spacing is terrible.

I feel like I'm being assaulted, Like I'm getting hit with a machine gun and you are rapid firing your sentences at me. I know you feel like the spacing breaks things up, but it actually just makes it all seem uniform. My eyes have a hard time following the writing because you are... how do I put it? Droning. You are droning.

You are like a professor who is teaching a class and speaking in a flat emotionless tone, from a visual perspective. I can't figure out from looking at your story where my eyes are supposed to go. I read through your prologue and it has some variation, but I don't really have a "feel" of the flow of things.

If you are going with single spacing, then you need paragraph indents. You really need it. That way where you have parts of the story that are not intended to be paragraphs, like:



It doesn't blend in. This section shouldn't have indents, whereas every other paragraph should, but because you have NO indents, mentally every paragraph is on the same level as these lines. They shouldn't.

Consider double spacing to break up important sections. Like before the above quote and after should be double spacing to set it apart.

Also, you have some lines all by themselves that clearly should be in a paragraph. Don't be afraid of a wall of text, as long as you frame it properly. if everything of a given subject needs to be together, put it together.

I am a reader. Reading is a mental exercise. You need to GUIDE my eyes. You need to let my eyes rest. You need to help me focus and let me know when I can pause and reflect. I have no idea where in your prologue I can stop to think about what I just read at any point of the story. I HAVE TO read that section from beginning to end without pause. You have made reading the prologue a sprint. It is a prologue. It should be a comfortable stroll. I should enjoy my stroll, pausing to smell the flowers and enjoy the scenery. I should not feel like "DAMN, I HAVE TO GET THIS OVER WITH."

So, before I do anything else, right off the bat I suggest you work on your pacing, and visual use of empty space.

I'll make a note to come back and make comments on the actual content later when I have time.

Aaah, I didn't actually know there were no indents. I get really confused on the formatting of the story sometimes 'cause I do all my work on mobile. Sorry! I'll try and fix it after my exams, ehe.

Okay. Lets move onto your opening. Normally you would have a single line as your opener, but you have "Ah..."
THAT. IS. TERRIBLE.

Your first line, is the ONLY LINE MOST PEOPLE WILL READ. If I was thinking about reading this book and I got past your cover page, and I opened up to "Ah..." I would close the page, move on, and never look back. However, this isn't the opener. Your opener is three lines. That is 2 lines too many.. YOU LIVE AND DIE ON YOUR OPENER.

Your opener is really:



Okay. We have a woman. She is surrounded by danger. She isn't worried about the danger. She is merely sighing. Her sigh is an "Ah..." as in a sigh of revelation. She has realized something while she is in this area of danger. She is encircled by death.

or is she?



Huh? WHAT THE FUCK? I have a woman IN PERIL and you are telling me about how her hair flows beautifully in the wind? Moonlight reflecting off it? WHAT? SHE IS SURROUNDED BY HARROWING GROUND. SHE IS SIGHING WITH REVELATION. WHY DO I CARE ABOUT HER HAIR?

How does her hair reflect the situation? What is her hair telling me? If THIS was the opening line, I'd be thinking, The protagonist is someone beautiful in a situation where it is night and there is something romantic going on.



Okay... we have the classic bitter smile of irony. However, is this really PURE despair? Really? She just had a sigh of revelation. She should be having a moment of reflection as she contemplates how she got into this terrible situation. If she is truly experiencing PURE despair, then she has NOTHING BUT DESPAIR. There is no time for self-reflection for she has lost all hope. There is nothing left. It is the BOTTOM and there is nothing else. How can she have a moment of revelation AND be PURE despair? You cannot have both.

This is a hodge-podge of nice sounding words that are put together to make me think this is deep, but if I spend any time thinking about it, I have way more questions ABOUT the meta then the story itself. Here, look at this.



This is the opener to Flip The Script. What does it tell you?

Toshi is our MC. He was walking and in the middle of his walk, something happened to make him stop. No action took place against him. He didn't fall. He didn't pass out. One step, walking, then not walking. Why?

He was trying to figure out where the planet went.

Not, where Am I? But something has happened that has caused him to wonder, "WHERE IS THE PLANET I WAS WALKING ON?" He was somewhere that in his current location he not only wasn't on the ground anymore, but he was somewhere he couldn't tell there was a PLANET anymore.

Tell me, are you curious as to what happened to the planet? Are you wondering who Toshi is and why he is in this situation? Do you have any concern for the MC? Do you want to know what happens to him? Can you relate to being in a situation where your entire universe is turned upside down with no warning?

Are you thinking of reading the next paragraph to find out more? At least ONE more paragraph, maybe?



This is the equivalent to the three lines you have after "Ah..." We have his new situation. He is floating in endless white space. He's not about to die, he's just lost all frame of reference. We get his mindset, "~I was walking...~ And we learn about our MC. He is THINKING and we see his thoughts and how he reacts. He isn't panicking. He isn't freaking out. He is reviewing the situation and trying to solve the problem. We get a glimpse of his personality. How does he deal with the absolutely insane and impossible? He thinks. Then, as his thinking fails him, he speaks out loud. This shows he isn't unflappable. He is starting to freak out. Slowly. He begins with talking to himself. His grasp on reality is shaky so he needs to hear something, even if it is his own voice. He is slowly creeping towards a panic attack, but it is a slow process.

What do we know about your MC?

We have contradictory information and we don't even know her name. We have a beautiful girl who is surrounded by danger who has given up and lost all hope. She's a LOSER. She's LOST. She has been defeated. She is pathetic. The only think I find appealing about her is the fact that her hair looks nice in the moonlight.

Is this the case? I dunno. I have only your opener to go off of. Am I making a lot of assumptions?

YUP.

Guess what? Your readers will make a lot of assumptions as well. I don't know what you INTENDED, but what I am THINKING is what matters. It doesn't matter what you write. What matters is what your audience READS. You want to get more readers?

FIX YOUR OPENER.

On the other hand, don't lie. Don't make an opener that misleads me. Your opener should reflect the story. If your story is about a beautiful woman who has hair that looks nice in the moonlight who has lost and given up, then the opener should reflect that. Don't LIE to your reader, but if the story is different, then you need to fix this.

Aaah I totally get what you're saying, I had a feeling it would be incredibly confusing. I've made notes of the things you wanted me to fix and I'll try my best to fix it the next time I get enough time to. Thank you!

---

Okay...

I really want to do this line by line, But I'm going to just hit the highlights as I go along.

Between paragraphs 9 and 10, you need to do something. Like, give me some sort of indication that there is a change in perspective because reading your story gave me whiplash.

You need some sort of establishing shot after your opening, and between paragraph 10 and 11. What I mean is a narration shot. Give me a top down view of things.

Am I supposed to like Lilianna? Is she our MC? Because she's evil. She fuckin' destroyed a COUNTRY for the sake of magic. She has killed untold innocents for petty revenge and she didn't even die. Holy CRAP. Right now I'm rooting for the people who killed her. I don't think you want that.

Okay...

Show don't tell, unless it is boring, then tell and get it over with.

You are mixing up your showing and telling. You really need to have TELL to establish the scene, then SHOW until you get to another boring part. You are ShowTellShowTellShowTell. it's jarring.

Example:



You are showing what she is doing, then TELLING US "was amazing at customer service and had a ton of experience handling kids, so she had lots of patience to spare for adults that wanted to act like children." How do we know this? Why do we know this?

Why is she talking out loud? Does she talk to herself often? Shouldn't she be thinking this? It's okay to share the MC's thoughts, but they should be thoughts, not words. If she's speaking out loud, then this is a character trait and needs to be included in the character AND BE A FLAW. If you do not include it as a flaw, then it is a plot contrivance for the ease of the author to give exposition.

Ugh. Running out of time. I'll try and get back to this another day.

---

How about...



Now then. What do we have with this rewrite?

1. Opener - We are now saying this story will be about your destiny and fate. The best you can be, or the worst. So there is a possibility for failure and we won't know how it turns out until the end. It is possible to achieve great things, but still have a horrible end. The reader now knows what the story is about, and what are the stakes. What is possible, and what is at risk. What are we to learn with this story? Will it be destiny or fate, or both? Is it possible to change or ignore them both? We do not know, but you must read to find out.

2. We have our example, who is clearly the one who created the MC soul. We have her horrible fate. How did she get to this point? Why? What happened that she willingly went down this path? These are things you must answer later, but they are certainly things the reader would like to know.

3. We keep the destruction of everything, but we remove the Proto-MC from being to blame. Her choices were a huge risk or a certain, slow, inevitable death of all things. She gambled. She lost. BUT... she took precautions. She hedged her bets with the Mote's release.

4. We frame it as a dream that the MC has been having. It is the call to adventure. This is something that the MC must have. The pull from her mundane life into the other world. We already know the MC is important, but we also know the MC is just a mote. Does the MC have individuality? Is she her own person, or nothing more than a fragment of a greater whole? What is individuality? How will she 'exist' if they merge? Will she be okay with it? Will her former personality force herself to submit?

5. Finally, we have a set up for her to have conflict with her boss. A chance to have life get so shitty that the obvious choice is to sy, "Fuck it, lets go running off to another universe to get magical powers as the once and future witch-queen.

Or... whatever the hell your story is about. I haven't read that far. Just getting to paragraph 10 has been quite a bit of work.

I'll wait until I get more feedback from you before continuing. I'm not sure if you are looking for this level of feedback.

Don't worry too much! I absolutely love this kind of feedback, it'll help me push forward and get better. But if you do find yourself straining to read it then you can just stop, forcing yourself to read a book isn't much fun at all and I'm not even paying you so I'd feel bad.

But regarding Lilianna's character...

SPOILERS: (I can't tap the spoilers tag, I'm not sure why)

Yeah she's super messy and I get that absolutely! It's on purpose ehe, and I know it's badly done but I want her to be a villain to everyone until her true goals are revealed. I want the readers to not like her by inputting stories and mythos of Lilianna being an absolutely horrible person, then show that the stories were twisted after her 'unaliving' and burning the entire continent.

And even then it'll be justified cause it's either save the magic and kill hundreds of thousands of innocents and make a whole continent barren, or let the magic die and be one of the only handful of people that has any chance of surviving when the isles' fall from the sky. She knew full well that her actions would make her out to be a villain that would never be forgotten, it was why she, although sighed in a moment of figuring out what she needed to do, had a smile of pure despair. Because all her hard work of bettering the reputation of witches and welding broken ties together would go down the drain, she had no hope left of being able to be there to see her hard work come to fruition cause she knew that she'd burn it all down in the name of magic.

But yeah, her character is super confusing and probably badly written, I totally get that! I just get confused and stuck on how to better write her, ehe.

EDIT: Formatting on mobile is hell I have to manually write out the commands for spoiler and quotes so I had to post and delete this a couple of times, sorry for blowing your alerts up.
 
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